Legal Separation: A Pastoral Alternative

This article was published in the canon law journal of St. Peter’s Pontifical Institute of Theology, in Bangalore India, by Fr. Phillip Brown, JCD. Three years later, in 2011, Father Brown was appointed Rector of the Theological College at the National Seminary of the Catholic University of America. He was President of the Canon Law Society of America in 2013.

Excerpt

Page 247: “[T]he Bishop of the place where the party seeking official recognition of the separation is living would be the appropriate ecclesiastical authority whose permission is required [before approaching the civil court …] Thus, a primary concern of canon law is that the case not be relegated to a civil court if the civil court judgment might result in declaring the dissolution of a valid marriage bond or some other effect contrary to divine law.”